It's About a Basic Goodness

Drummer Jerry Granelli on A Charlie Brown Christmas

Good morning from frosty Flagstaff. My musical project JPW played here last night at the High Country Motor Lodge, which is where I’m typing these words. It was positively magical: a room full of cozy-attired Flagstaffians, fires glowing bright outside, glasses clinking, and smiling faces all around. A real treat.

Riding a post show high, I decided to behave like an absolute rockstar in my room afterward, and by that I mean I fell asleep watching The UnXplained with William Shatner, knocked the remote control off the bed in my slumber, and, as of yet, haven’t been able to locate the second of two batteries that launched out as the device hit the floor. I found one under the heater; I’ll keep you posted as to whether or not the other turns up.

It’s Christmastime. But for whatever reason, I’m having trouble locating the spirit this year. All the global turmoil, personal matters (an ailing dog), the general and ever-creeping malaise…whatever it is, I’m not happy about it. See, I love Christmas and its various scenes: the tree bathing the living room in multi-colored hues in the early morning; houses lit up with bright strands of glowing lights; jingling carolers, all that. But Yuletide cheer has eluded me so far this season.

I suppose there’s only one course of action, a sort of “break glass in case of Christmas emergency” deal: I’ve got to bust out my copy of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas when I get home tonight. As I’ve written here before, watching the animated special never fails to move me and inspire feelings of hope and peace, in no small part because of the low-key West Coast jazz score by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

No one captures the gentle tension between melancholy and sweetness the way A Charlie Brown Christmas does. In 2018, I was able to interview the late drummer Jerry Granelli about his work on the soundtrack for Aquarium Drunkard. I thought I’d share a few excerpts from that interview with the hope that it helps get me, and perhaps you, deep into the Christmas zone. If you’d like to read the entire talk, which covers plenty of fascinating territory, let me encourage you to subscribe to Aquarium Drunkard. We just published our Year in Review feature, which includes more than 300 incredible musical works for 2024.

Perhaps you could even gift a subscription to the music lover in your life for the holidays. Christmas, with all its frustrations and dissatisfactions, still offers us a chance to go “real in” regarding our experiences with the world and each other, to exchange care back and forth. It’s a time to celebrate the unlikely and absurdly meaningful: a holy being found in the lowliest of settings, strange stars guiding us in the skies, Vince Guaraldi’s fingers on the keys, Fred Marshall on the bass, Jerry Granelli’s expressive brushes skittering across the snare.

Jerry Granelli on A Charlie Brown Christmas

Aquarium Drunkard: It took years for you to be properly credited on A Charlie Brown Christmas. What was the holdup?

Jerry Granelli: I don’t know. [Laughs] It was the beginning of what I jokingly call my career, you know? It wasn’t that big a deal. It was like, “Okay, I was with Vince, and this is one of the things I did with Vince.” It was a real start for me in terms of people like Ralph Gleason and national critics writing about me, but then I went on to record with Denny Zeitlin and Charlie Haden. I wasn’t paying attention, really. Somebody blew it up on the internet at some point, they said, “What a minute, I know Jerry Granelli [played on the record]”…They just never bothered to keep track of it. Eventually, they credited me, then they credited [additional drummer] Colin Bailey with some of it. But they just didn’t keep records back then. It sounds like I’m talking about ancient times: “The first records, my son.” [Laughs]

AD: You’d been playing with Vince Guaraldi for a while. What kind of discussions did you guys have about the compositions for A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Jerry Granelli: We knew the feeling. We knew the feeling of Charlie Brown; we knew the feeling of Charlie Schulz. We’d tried to [soundtrack] a documentary about him before making the Christmas special: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. But nobody wanted it. So we’d already had some of the flavor. Charlie Brown cartoons, you saw them every day in The San Francisco Chronicle and all over the country. We had a relationship with Charlie and his wife and family. Charlie Brown is pathetic, sarcastic, wise, and playful, all at the same time, very much like Vince Guaraldi. We were just trying to catch the feeling of it, man. Vince had these tunes—some of which had been written for other things—and he pulled one or two out. He’d bring another in, and we’d rehearse it, play it out on a gig, and then we just went in and did it. It was really simple. I wish I could make up a great wonderful story about the art coming from the heavens or something, but it felt pretty simple. And honest. Vince always demanded we played our hearts out. We played our best. But that music is simple…when I play it live, we really play it, man.

AD: Your brushwork on the recordings is beautiful. This is one of the LPs that made a lot of people fall in love with jazz, myself certainly included. You spoke about getting the “feel” right. The music here is sweet but it’s tinged with melancholy.

Jerry Granelli: Oh, yeah.

AD: At the time, did you guys say to yourselves, “This is pretty mellow for a children’s program?”

Jerry Granelli: I think we were totally in the zone when we were doing it. We knew from the other show we tried that the odds were against us anyway. Everybody had already said, “What are you kidding? Jazz and a cartoon?” The documentary wasn’t even a cartoon, but the only part [anybody] liked was when [producer] Lee Mendelson showed this one little animated part. That’s all they liked, they hated the rest of it. So they said to Lee, “Can you make a TV show out of this?” And Lee, being a true producer by nature said, “Oh, sure!” And that was it.

I think part of the beauty of the show is that we knew, musically, we were playing good. There weren’t a lot of takes. We were doing our thing. We were a good trio, traveling all over the country playing as a jazz trio. Miles was coming every night to listen to us play. So we weren’t doubting that. But we did have this idea of trying to serve the music, trying to serve the piece we were playing. My parts? They’re about as simple as they get on there. But that’s what it needed.

AD: You’ve studied Buddhism for a long time, correct?

Jerry Granelli: I’ve been a Buddhist since 1970. I think this shit’s getting serious. [Laughs]

AD: Does your Buddhism inform the lens through which you see A Charlie Brown Christmas? Does it feel like the message of the film harmonizes well with your beliefs?

Jerry Granelli: The whole thing is about a basic goodness. The world is screwed up. I look at my grandkids and I’m like, “Oh man, I’m sorry.” But there is still human wisdom. There still is human dignity. You get a thousand people in a room and they’re there to feel love. You can feel it. That’s still possible. Buddhism is based on the idea that all humans are basically awake. You have everything you need to live this life and help other people.

I think I’m a little softer as a person. I was lying on a beach in Nova Scotia with my girlfriend and this old guy asked me, “Are you Jerry Granelli?” I said, “Yeah,” thinking, “Oops, what’d I do?” He said, “I just want to thank you for being part of this music,” and introduced me to his grandson. I allowed myself to be touched, in a non-ego-centered way, like, “This isn’t about you, idiot, it’s about sharing something.”

AD: A Charlie Brown Christmas is about having all we need, too. It’s about how we don’t need extra stuff. It’s not about commercial appeal or consumerism. It’s about something deeper.

Jerry Granelli: Linus gives that speech, you know, which freaked CBS out. It totally freaked them out.

AD: If jazz music was freaking people out, I have to imagine a speech that religious turned some heads.

Jerry Granelli: Between that and the jazz music, they were like, “We’re not going to let no little kid come out on stage, some dumb animation, and tell us what Christmas is about, which is diametrically opposed to what we’re trying to prove Christmas is about,” you know? Every show, we get one child from the choir to come up and do it. Boy or girl, they volunteer, and it’s so good. They just kill it. They say, “Oh I might make a mistake” and I say, “Whatever you do, as soon as you walk up there and start this speech, they’re going to love you. Completely.” And that piece happens every time in the show. [The show came about when I] finally could see that this could be a piece — not a copy or a cover show — which is why I call it “Tales of A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I talk for 20 minutes or however long I’m moved. I share whatever stories I happen to remember. Sometimes my manager will go, “That didn’t really happen, you made that one up.” And I’ll go, “Really? Far out!” Nobody else was fucking there. It’s just me and Lee Mendelson.

AD: It happened if you say it happened.

Jerry Granelli: We’re the only ones left! If you can prove otherwise, that’s cool with me!

J.R. Bohannon Plays Vince Guaraldi

If you find yourself craving even more A Charlie Brown Christmas sounds, I heartily recommend this two-song set from pedal steel guitarist J.R. Bohannon. Released in 2023 by the great Astral Spirits label, J.R. Bohannon Plays Vince Guaraldi features two captivatingly woozy renditions of classics from the soundtrack: “Christmas Time is Here” and “Skating.” Slipping and sliding over a ghostly rhythm track, loping bass arcs, and a thick layer of ambient noise, he brings a spooky and psychedelic spirit to Guaraldi’s timeless melodies.